Annual Lecture Kim Wilkie, Landscape Architecture

Tuesday 10th of September 2019

The Future of Landscape Architecture

What was the main contribution of the landscape profession during the 20th century?

It is a great time to be a landscape architect. The spirit of place is alive and well and on people’s minds.

During the twentieth century, all the design professions were given a good shake-up. The lay public has taken a new interest in their surroundings. The state of the environment has caught fears and imaginations. It is now part of the public consciousness and the political agenda. The hubris of building architects has received an icy blast. City planners have been ridiculed away from isolated theoretical modelling. Engineers have been prodded back into creativity. And landscape architects are reawakening from decades of timidly shrubbing up supermarket car parks or smoothing out slag heaps.

The contribution which landscape architects can make at this point is immense and pivotal. Landscape architecture addresses both the built and the cultivated environment. It thinks about city as well as countryside; housing as well as agriculture; cultural history as well as nature conservation.

After 25 years of running his own practice, Kim now works as a strategic and conceptual landscape consultant. He collaborates with architects and landscape architects around the world and combines designing with the muddy practicalities of running a small farm in Hampshire, where he is now based. Kim studied history at Oxford and landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, before setting up his landscape studio in London in 1989. He continues to teach and lecture in America; writes optimistically about land and place from Hampshire; and meddles in various national committees on landscape and environmental policy in the UK.

Current projects include the redesign of the grounds of the Natural History Museum in London, colleges in Oxford and Cambridge and plans for a series of new settlements, combining housing with sustainable farming.

Our local Kim Wilkie project at Boughton House (see pricture above) : The Orpheus Project
For over 200 years the huge formal garden at Boughton House lay hidden, reclaimed by nature. The current Duke was passionate about adding a 21st century edge. He wanted a creative endeavour that would compliment and enhance the triumphant landscapes of his ancestors. So the Duke commissioned Kim Wilkie to design a striking new landform, Orpheus. Orpheus takes the form of an inverted pyramid, sunk into the earth and open to the elements. It is at once a negative space and a sculptural form. Its serene lines seem to invite you to descend into its depths and enjoy the tranquillity